The July/August issue of Technology Review is focused on Web 2.0. The lead article, “The Business of Social Networks“, asks “Web 2.0–the dream of the user-built, user-centered, user-run Internet–has delivered on just about every promise except profit. Will its most prominent example, social networking, ever make any money?”

“Social networking is the fastest-growing activity on Web 2.0–the shorthand term for the new user-centered Internet, where everyone publicly modifies everyone else’s work, whether it’s an encyclopedia entry or a photo album. The growth of social networking is astonishing, and it has spread to sites of all sizes, which are increasingly intertwined as platforms open (see “Who Owns Your Friends?”). Even small players are soaring.”

There are quite a few interesting stories on various Web 2.0 topics. Visit the table of contents to see what’s available.

“Does what’s on your desk reveal what’s on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away? For the last ten years psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds (desks, bedrooms, even our clothes and our cars), he shows not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected-and unplanned-ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us.”

Gosling and his colleagues and students have also been studying how people use and interpret information on social networking sites to make statements about themselves, with papers in ICWSM 1007 and 2008.

A UMBC led team recently won a MURI award from DoD to work on “Assured Information Sharing Lifecycle”. It is an interesting mix of work on new security models, policy driven security systems, context awareness, privacy preserving data mining, and social networking. The award really brings together many different strains of research in eBiquity, as well as some related reserach in our department. We’re just starting off, and excited about it. UMBC’s web page had a story about this, and more recently, GCN covered it.